Amaranth (pictures I like)

Queso Kings (a food review post)

Let's talk grilled cheese.
Because who doesn't love grilled cheese, right? I mean, it's so loved it's in The Sims.
Actually, historically, I am not a lover of grilled cheese. That's what will come of growing up with white bread and American cheese as your sole ingredients. And I grew out of ever wanting American cheese on anything by about the time I was in middle school. I'm pretty sure it glows in the dark, though I've always been too afraid to check.

Around my house, we make pretty darn good grilled cheese. And, yeah, I know how I'm frequently saying about how we have a hard time finding restaurant food that is better than what we make at home, but we spend a lot of time working on cooking stuff for the purpose of having better food than you can get at a restaurant. Better and better for you, because we don't use all the processed crap that most places will serve you. So, you know, when we make grilled cheese, my wife makes the bread, because a good grilled cheese starts with good bread. No, we don't make our own cheese, but I do make sure I'm getting quality cheese. And, of course, a grilled cheese at our house is rarely just cheese and bread...

Maybe I'll do a post someday about the various grilled cheeses we make.

I only tell you all of this so that you understand what it means when I do a food review and I'm saying that something is as good or better than what we make at home. That means something.

Not to get sidetracked on cheese but, awhile back, my wife and I decided to start doing more sampling of local cheese places, kind of the result of a birthday trip a few years ago to Cowgirl Creamery (which makes my favorite cheese ever!). The short of that is that last year when we were in Eureka, we made a stop at the Loleta Cheese Factory (they provide samples of everything!); they have an attached grilled cheese bar: Queso Kings. We, of course, got lunch there, because what's better than grilled cheese for lunch, right?

Unfortunately, Queso Kings does not have its menu posted on its website, so I can't tell you what we got. Well, I can tell you the name of the thing my wife got: Sweet Baby Cheesus. She loved it. But I don't remember what was on it or anything more than the name.

We took another trip to Eureka this year and took our kids with us this time. One of the reasons was to take our kids to Queso Kings, because grilled cheese is kind of my daughter's dream food. Grilled cheese and mac'n'cheese... hmm... I'm sensing a pattern. My wife, again, got the Sweet Baby Cheesus because she loved it so much. I'm pretty sure my son (the younger one) and I got the thing in the picture posted above (which came from Queso King's FB page), which was most excellent.

As an aside, we don't often do grilled cheeses with meats here at home, except for the rare occasions when I make grilled tuna, which doesn't quite count, so it's unlikely I'll better that one here at home.

Unfortunately, I don't remember what my daughter got, so I can't comment on it.

At any rate, if you're ever in the Eureka area or, now, the Sacramento area (because they just opened a new location there) and you fancy a grilled cheese -- or even if you don't because you will as soon as you take the first bite -- you should stop at Queso Kings. I'm pretty sure you won't be sorry you did.

Flower Delivery (Existential Violence, part one)

I spent a summer during college working for a flower shop. Mostly, I did deliveries, which was actually pretty fun. Back in those days, I really enjoyed driving. When you're 20, there's not much better than cruising around with your music blasting and singing at the top of your lungs. Especially if you're getting paid to do just that! Of course, even rush hour traffic in Shreveport (at the time, anyway; I don't know about now) was nothing compared to the kind of traffic we have out here in the Bay area all the time, and driving is something I actively avoid these days.

All of which is beside the point. Beside it, because what's important is that I worked at that flower shop.

Except for the other delivery driver, all of the other people who worked at the flower shop were women, and it was owned by a woman. I suppose that makes sense. In the South, if you were a dude who liked to do anything with flowers, it made you automatically gay. Even working as a delivery driver made you suspect, I shit you not. Meaning, it was said to me in all seriousness more than once by dudes who found out I delivered flowers, "You're not gay, are you?" Which is to say that I don't think a guy could have gotten away with working in a flower shop or arranging flowers in the South back then. And that still might be the case, especially these days, in a lot of places. If you like to work with flowers, it means you're gay and, if you're gay, you're going to get the shit beat out of you.

Yeah, that bit of social commentary was free.
But, then, it's all free, but that was extra free.

What this all means is that I spent a considerable amount of time that summer listening to this small group of women doing a lot of gossiping, especially about their home lives, and talking shit about their husbands. Or praising them, depending on the day. There was one woman in particular who -- the correct word here is not precisely "complained," but I don't have a better word than that at the moment -- complained about her husband a lot: He was in the midst of a midlife crisis and, evidently, doing everything he could to kill himself.

I don't mean that he was trying to commit suicide, at least not directly, but he had taken up living dangerously and doing all kinds of extreme sport shit.

It all started with a red sports car. A small red sports car (I don't remember what kind, but he did offer me a ride once which I awkwardly declined). A convertible. Which he never drove below the speed limit unless you count the brief number of seconds it took him to get to 60 when taking off from a red light (which is why I declined a ride in the car). I think there were numerous speeding tickets involved in all of this.

From the sports car, it moved on to skydiving, hang gliding, and I don't know what all else. He really wanted to try surfing, but it's not really the kind of thing you can do in Louisiana. Still, she wasn't too concerned until he took up dirt bikes. At the point when I started working there, he'd already hurt himself several times, and she was legitimately frightened that he was going to die.

I'd heard a lot about him by the time I finally met him. He came walking through the back door of the flower shop in all of his dirt bike gear and covered in, well, dirt. He was in his 50s, hair gone to grey, wiry frame. I don't know what he did for a living (other than try to kill himself), but his wife worked at the flower shop for the social interaction, not because they needed the money, and that money was just hers to spend as she pleased, so she also used to talk about what she bought with her paychecks. He had a swagger to his step, unless it was all of the dirt bike padding that caused it. Honestly, it was hard to tell.

He'd come by that day because he'd wrecked his dirt bike that morning -- but don't worry, because he was okay -- and it was going to take a couple of weeks for the repairs. Because he didn't want to wait to get the motorcycle back, he'd gone to buy a new one. However, while there, he'd been seduced by a crotch rocket (that's the motorcycle equivalent of a sports car, for those of you who don't know) and decided to take up street racing while waiting to get his dirt bike back. He wanted to show off his new bike; unfortunately, not a single one of us really cared. The other delivery driver might have because he was also a mechanic and into that stuff, but he wasn't there that day.

The husband-guy really needed the prospect of death to prove to himself that he was alive, something that I've never understood and I hope that I never arrive in a place like that. What strikes me now, though, is the inherent violence of this kind of existential crisis. Maybe all existential crises, because they all boil down to the same thing: a conflict between what was and what will be and what to do about it in the now. All conflict contains some amount of violence, even if it's not physical.

When I contemplate the current existential crisis we're going through in the USA, right now, this guy, with his need to risk death in order to feel like he's living, is what comes to mind.
But more on that later...

__________

If you enjoyed reading this post, please share it.

It's not hard, just a couple of clicks.

Thanks!

Nine (pictures I like)

Underbelly (pictures I like)

Marching (pictures I like)

Out of the Mist (pictures I like)